Your Views

Go after straw purchasers

I had to shake my head at yet another of Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett's and Police Chief Edward Flynn's misguided postmortem attempts to stop gun violence in the city ("Milwaukee officials seek stricter gun laws," Aug. 6).

These officials ignore one of the primary sources for crime guns: the straw purchase. According to federal statistics, close to half of the guns used in crimes are straw purchases. Straw purchases are made by people who can legally purchase weapons but then turn them over to felons who are their relatives or friends. These felons, in turn, use the weapons in crimes.

When Flynn testified in Washington, D.C., after the Newtown massacre, he was questioned about investigating falsified background information. Flynn rejected such enforcement, saying it was a waste to go on a paper chase after such criminals. The chief simply got it wrong. It is precisely looking at this primary source of crime guns — yes, chasing paper — that can be an effective way to reduce gun violence.

Instead of worrying about guns already on the street, the mayor and chief should work to stop the supply. One idea would be to change state laws to charge people who make straw purchases as accessories to gun-related crimes, with stiff prison terms for these accomplices.

Asking Madison and Washington for more dollars and tougher laws to slam the iron bars on straw purchasers is not a waste of time. Chasing that paper should vastly reduce the murder and mayhem these officials bemoan.

Evan BaneGlendale

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The right has no plan

Letter writer John Fruncek believes it is now abundantly clear that Obamacare is a disaster for America ("Repeal Obamacare," Your Views, Aug. 6).

He claims that businesses are paring employees and demoting them to part time. In spite of reality, he projects huge increases in health insurance premiums. Only a few states have their exchanges in place, and premiums have fallen — by 50% in New York, big drops in California as well.

Low-wage, low-benefit employers are already at 30 hours or less. A business with fewer than 50 employees is exempt. If a business has full-time employees. there is a very good reason. That business needs full-time employees. If it did not need them, it already would have downsized. Imagine General Motors going to a 30-hour week. How about the banking industry? The road builders? Police and fire? More people in the insurance pool drops rates. That has always been true, and it will be true in the future.

Two states, Montana and Vermont, are already preparing to go single payer. In 2016, other states are free to establish single-payer systems. After the savings are realized in these progressive states, it will only be a matter of time before more and more states take advantage of the benefits of single payer. Twenty years from now, the entire nation could be single payer. That is the reason for the pushback from the insurance industry.

What Fruncek wants one to believe is pure right-wing misinformation. Of course he and the echo chamber offer no replacement plan. They don't have one.

David RoeslerMilwaukee

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It's not worth $15 an hour

Seriously? Working in a fast-food restaurant is a perfectly fine job, but where do people get the notion that, other than possibly climbing the managerial ladder, it's meant as a "career"? These are perfect jobs for younger people in school or others maybe looking for a second job, etc.

No one ever intended basic fast-food jobs as a means to an end to live the American Dream. Check the curriculum in the local schools. Fast Food 101 is generally not available — and for good reason.

It's time to get real! Fifteen dollars an hour to flip burgers is totally nonsensical.

Bryan SachsGermantown

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Put a carbon tax in place

But, as the Journal Sentinel's editorial points out, the primary cause is climate change, and the consequences are serious. So, I agree we need to take President Barack Obama's regulatory plan for reducing greenhouse gases seriously. But if members of Congress would get serious about lowering carbon emissions, there is a much simpler and fairer approach.

Obama's regulations increase the cost of fossil fuels. That will spur energy-efficiency innovations, some conservation and a transition to non-carbon fuels such as wind and solar. That's all good. But it's not fair to poorer Americans. Although they consume less energy than most of us, they can't afford any increased energy costs.

So, we need congressional legislation that raises the price of fossil fuels, but with a provision that returns any new carbon taxes in equal monthly checks to each American adult. Government would keep none of it. With equal dividend checks, most Americans — especially lower-income Americans — would get more money from the dividend than they paid in new carbon fuel fees.